


The Broken Jug

by Island_of_Reil



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dialect, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Fever, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Infection, M/M, Major Character Injury, Pneumonia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Rape Aftermath, Rescue, Sexual Harassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:24:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5731006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teenaged Csevet does not escape from Tethimar and his hounds. After too many days gone by, his lover and their two best friends set out to find him and bring him home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Broken Jug

When Valer thought back later on the day Csevet departed for Eshoravee, he tried to imagine that his touch had lingered protectively, somehow, on his lover’s skin. And he hoped devoutly to Saleizho that all that had happened later did not befoul it in Csevet’s memories.

***

The morning the order came in, they’d been free, so they spent a few precious hours in their pushed-together beds. They’d progressed from passionate writhing to stunned embrace to pillow talk to the lazy communion of sated body against sated body when, just as the first droplets of rain pattered against the small window, the knock came at the door.

“Lads! Is’t safe now?”

Valer sighed, feeling his ears droop. “I suppose Barethis would like to come into his room.”

“I suppose so as well,” Csevet murmured. Leaving off the ribbon of Valer’s he’d been toying with, he tugged a coverlet over them both up to their waists, then called out, “Come in, Barethis.”

The door opened to admit their roommate, who ducked the lintel as he always had to. “Glad I’m not interrupting anything,” Barethis said with a teasing note in his voice. “Csevet, Esaran sent me here with an order for thee; shouldst get ready for a long ride.”

Csevet frowned. “To where, dost know?”

“To Eshoravee.”

“Where’s that?” Valer asked.

“It’s a manor of the Tethimada, so presumably somewhere in Thu-Athamar.” Barethis pulled a rolled-up paper from the breast pocket of his leathers. “Map with directions, courtesy of Esaran.” Gently he lobbed the scroll into the air toward the bed.

Csevet sat up, leaned forward, and caught it with a practiced hand. Unrolling it, he frowned more deeply, and his ears fell. “Goddesses, thou’rt not joking about the ride. And with a bad storm come in as well.” They had all grown accustomed to riding in any weather, fair or foul, but that made the latter none the more appealing.

“Tha’st drawn the short end of the stick, looks like,” Disu said as she wandered into the boys’ room and shut the door behind her.

“So’st thou, judging by thy drowned-rat look,” Valer said.

“Aye, but it weren’t so bad ’til I had half an hour left to Cetho, and then the sky opened up on me. Ugh.” Disu pulled her leather tunic and shirt over her head as one and dropped them to the floor with a splat.

“Thou’lt be mopping that puddle up, lass,” Valer warned her, only half in jest.

“Worry not, I will,” Disu promised in a bored singsong as she began to tug off her sodden breastband as well.

“Disu!” Barethis sounded more exasperated than shocked. “Where’s thy maidenly modesty?”

She snorted. “They don’t breed modest maidens so far northeast. Anywise, t’is naught tha’sn’t seen before, and those two in the bed yonder take no interest in it.” The breastband joined her tunic, and she grabbed a towel slung over a rail and applied it lazily to her small bare breasts.

Valer feigned mortal offense. “Say’st I’ve no appreciation for feminine beauty?”

“Aye, I’m sure dost, as tha appreciat’st a nice sunrise or fine-bred horse.” She tucked the towel around her bosom with a knot. “Mind an I shuck me trews, too? Me arse feels like a chilled pudding.”

Barethis’s eyebrows rose. Csevet’s face went carefully blank. Valer said gallantly, “If you are trying to seduce our lover and ourself, fair Dach’osmin, you are a few hours late; we are both quite spent.” Disu grinned at him, clasped her hands over her head, and shimmied her body in mock-seductiveness. Barethis smiled weakly, but his ears began to flatten.

“I should think Esaran wouldn’t approve, thou casting off thy clothes will-ye-nill-ye and dancing like that in front of men,” Csevet said only a bit reprovingly. “Thou’rt already in her bad books, Disu.”

Disu snorted. “Old cow. Jealous, she is.”

“Because thou provok’st her,” Barethis said with genuine sternness. “How dost believe wilt get a letter of recommendation and a good post if canst not behave with dignity? She’s far kinder to thee than many a noble would be. Thou must take example from Csevet, with all his patience and tact.”

Csevet’s face tinted a deep rose at that, and the pleased quiver of his ears made his silver earrings jangle. Valer felt warmth pool in his groin once again and his own ears twitch. Csevet was oh, so pretty when his fair skin turned rosy. Especially when it went rosy all over. Forcing his mind back to the present, Valer said, “Where’dst thou go, Disu?”

“Isvaroë,” she said. “Far downriver, nigh unto Barizhan.”

Barethis frowned. “Is’t where Chenelo Zhasan was relegated, and the little half-goblin prince with her?”

“Aye,” Csevet said. Valer’s heart wrenched, and his ears tightened against his skull.

“He’s to be relegated again, poor mite,” Disu said. “To another Drazhadeise manor, if canst call this one such, out in the swamps of Thu-Evresar. His new guardian’s a cousin from some lesser house or other who’s galled His Serenity and is being relegated along with the lad.”

“They should send him instead to his mother’s kin,” Barethis said with a hint of anger.

“They will not,” Csevet said sadly, pulling the coverlets up higher over his and Valer’s bodies as if a chill breeze had passed through the room. Under them he found Valer’s hand and took it in his. “They fear that in the Corat’ Dav Arhos the boy would be turned against the Emperor and his court.”

Disu’s mouth went hard and her ears flat. She would not say it even in the privacy of the boys’ room, as Saleizho only knew who might be listening at a door. But they could all hear the words she was thinking: _As an His Serenity hasn’t made a fair passing job of that himself._ Valer gripped Csevet’s hand under the coverlets, feeling Csevet press it in response.

With an effort, he turned his thoughts away from the image of a dark and woebegone little boy, one whose vast wealth and impressive bloodline had shielded him far less from the cruelties of this world than Valer’s lowborn, dirt-poor parents had protected him from the same. He said, “Csevet and I should dress, and Disu, shouldst change, that we all might take luncheon together before we see Csevet off. I’ve no orders just yet; Barethis, Disu, how about you?”

“Esaran said she’ll need me to run some messages at Court later, but no, nothing pressing,” Barethis said.

“Nay, I’m in for the nonce,” Disu said. “I’ll meet ye in the dining hall.” She grabbed up her wet clothes from the floor.

“Put them back on before leav’st,” Barethis said sharply. “Not all the lads in this dormitory are marnis.” She rolled her eyes but obeyed, flinching at their clamminess. Valer hadn’t doubted she would exit their room fully clothed; even Disu had her limits, as shocking to Merrem Esaran as they might be.

Shortly thereafter they gathered in the large, disorganized combination of kitchen and dining room that served the couriers’ fleet to laugh and talk as they dined on cold meat pasties, apples, and watered ale. Very watered ale, in Csevet’s case. Afterward he tucked more of the pasties and apples into a pouch and took up a water skin for the long ride ahead of him. Barethis and Disu excused themselves, the one off to see Esaran and the other to the women’s bathhouse.

Valer followed Csevet to the stables. As the rain began to drum down more heavily, both of them pulled their cloaks over their heads, and Csevet drew his over his saddlebags as well. “Such ill luck,” Valer called out over the din of it.

“We each of us have our turn of it,” Csevet said with equanimity as they made the shelter of the stable.

Valer sighed. “’Tis better than serving on our backs, they say. Though betimes I wonder an it truly is. Soft, warm bed, no rain…” 

His words fell away when he saw the grey fire of Csevet’s gaze.

“Never wish that,” Csevet said, quietly but indignantly. “Thou know’st not what it’s like.”

And, too late, Valer remembered Csevet’s mother’s sister. He was too dark to blush visibly, but he felt as though the raindrops that had fallen on his face were fair sizzling off it.

“Forgive me,” he said gravely.

The heat went out of Csevet’s eyes. “Always,” he said, just as earnestly, then gave Valer a small, sweet smile.

Valer leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. Csevet caught his elbow and kissed him back, but before three more kisses had gone by and before Valer could touch his lover’s tongue with his own, Csevet pulled away. “I could stand all the day and all the night here kissing thee, but each moment I do is one moment I’m later in returning,” he said regretfully.

“Dutiful boy,” Valer said with a rueful smile, watching him secure the bags beneath the saddle of his mare. “Saleizho guard thee, my love.”

Csevet looked up from the task to flash him his most brilliant smile. Csevet had a smile for everyone, but for most folk the smile was bland and unrevealing. This smile was for Valer alone, and it fair lit up the stables as Csevet leapt onto the horse’s back with more grace than Valer had ever seen outside of the troupe of traveling acrobats he’d watched when he was six years old.

“And thee as well,” Csevet replied, raising his voice over the distance between them and the growing roar of the rain. And then he touched his heels to the mare’s sides, and he was off into the foul grey afternoon.

***

Four days later, the storm had blown off to the east, leaving behind sodden cobblestones and ground drying out in the modest heat of the early springtime sun.

“He should have been back by now,” Valer said, staring mournfully out a hallway window.

He had said that dozens of times in the last day to Barethis, when they’d run into one another in their various errands to and from Court. Each time Barethis had calmly assured him that Csevet would, indeed, be back. Csevet, Barethis reminded Valer, was an excellent horseman with a strong sense of direction, enough of the basic woodcraft that permitted couriers to sleep in the rough if need be, and the ability to charm the most disagreeable soul out of a bowl of soup and a dry bed. If anyone could return safely from a long journey in foul weather, Csevet could.

This time, Barethis was silent at first. Then he said, “Indeed, he should have.”

The pit of Valer’s stomach turned over, and his ears hung low.

Then Barethis said, “Captain Volsharezh.”

“Shouldn't we speak to Esaran first?”

“No. She has the authority to dispatch us for errands but not for … not for aught like this.” Barethis swallowed. “Know’st thou much of the Tethimada, Valer?”

“Not really,” Valer said, the hairs on his neck rising at his friend’s tone. “Powerful house, rich one, own most of the land in Thu-Athamar, deal in silk. That’s all I think I’ve heard.” When Barethis did not reply at first, Valer asked, “What dost know of them?”

“I…” Barethis swallowed again. Then, his own voice dropping and his ears following suit, he said, “Others are wondering what happened to Csevet, too. There’s a story I heard whispered of last night. A courier girl who worked out of Ashedro, betimes made runs to Puzhvarno. One day about a year ago, they sent her to Eshoravee. She never came back again.”

“And no one’s any idea what happened to her?”

Barethis laughed bitterly. “Why would anyone _care,_ Valer, other than her family and her friends? She was a courier. Nothing more.”

The bile burned hot at the back of Valer’s throat. He knew these things happened. It was not as though he’d never been propositioned, even had his arse rudely grabbed a time or two. He had smiled, teeth clenched behind his lips, at the importunate bastard who’d done it. Because one had to. But that… that was nothing like … _Oh, gods, Csevet._

“I shouldn’t put nightmares into thy head, I’m sure thou’st enough of them,” Barethis muttered, ducking his head in regret. “Let’s see the captain.”

Volsharezh was in his small office, working through a stack of papers. The man, Valer thought and not for the first time, ought to have had a much larger office and the perks that came with it. Orimar’s office. Not that a commoner from the western badlands was going to ever oust a nobleman from such a prize spot, no matter how useless and thieving that nobleman was.

“Captain,” Barethis said, he and Valer sketching bows.

“Lads,” Volsharezh said. He didn’t quite straighten up from his paperwork, but his ears rose to attention. “Come in, close the door. Sit, if one of you’d like.” He gestured briefly at the solitary wooden chair.

“No, thank you, sir,” Valer said, and he could feel the tension in his voice jerk the captain’s head up like the hook on a fisherman’s line.

Volsharezh frowned. “What troubles you, that you’ve sought us out?”

“Sir,” Valer said. “Csevet Aisava should have been back by now from Eshoravee, but no one’s heard a word from him. And he’s a fast rider.”

The captain remained silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “The journey to Eshoravee is long, Valer, and we have had foul weather. He very well may have taken refuge in an inn or a barn.”

“But he should have been back by this time yesterday, sir. We,” and in that word Barethis included Valer, “fear he may have encountered ill fortune of some nature or other.”

Volsharezh studied their faces a moment, then said, “We presume you’ve come to ask permission to go find him.”

“We have, sir,” Valer said, hope and terror mixed together expanding in his breast like the balloon of an airship.

The captain was silent for another moment. Then he said, “We should not grant it. Couriers do sometimes tarry, and a few wander off from their routes of their own accord. We do not wish to set a precedent that each instance of same is cause for alarm.”

“No, sir,” Barethis said. Valer held his breath.

After a moment, Volsharezh added gravely, “However, we do not believe Csevet would tarry overlong, much less abandon his post. He is an excellent courier, one of the best we have ever overseen, and likely destined for better things. And, though we do not approve of the spreading of rumors, we have heard… unsavory things about the manor of Eshoravee.”

A beat went by, and then Valer said hoarsely, “So we may go there to find him, sir?”

“You may.” When both boys exhaled in relief, their ears rising, Volsharezh’s look and voice turned sharp. “On the condition that you not spend more time than is absolutely necessary, nor take any foolish, hot-headed risks. We know he is greatly loved of you and of others, and it speaks well of you that you are protective of him. But we wish to avoid, at all costs, provoking an incident with the Tethimada.”

He paused, then added, “Or having to send out yet another search party after yet another week.”

***

“NO!” Barethis and Valer shouted in unison, Valer almost as loud as Barethis. The sound echoed throughout the boys’ room.

Disu’s chin went up and her ears back. “Aye. I’m coming with ye.”

“Why?” Barethis’s voice was harsh and ragged, his ears flat to his head. “Is’t not enough that Valer may have lost _his_ beloved?” His voice hitched on the last word and he turned away to master himself. Disu blinked at his broad back, eyes wide and throat working. But when he turned back to her she was once again the picture of resolution.

“I’ll be with ye two,” she said. “Naught will befall me.”

“Aye, because we’ll have to protect thee,” Barethis snarled. “From how many men I know not. When Saleizho only knows what condition Csevet will be in. Perhaps we’ll have to protect him as well. Thou’lt be a hindrance.”

“I am no hindrance!” Disu shouted, her voice dropping an octave and her fists clenching.

“Disu,” Valer said, interpolating himself between the two of them and putting his hands on her shoulders. “Please.”

“I am coming with you,” Disu said, and though her words were iron-firm and in her best Court enunciation, her eyes had begun to glisten. Valer cursed silently. He knew she did not weep to get her way but because she was truly distraught. He wished he could comfort her. But he had little enough comfort for himself, and if she came along, Barethis would have no comfort, either.

“Fine,” Barethis said after a moment, his voice hollow. “We can’t very well stop thee, can we? Thou might as well be useful. Pack a full saddlebag with a big blanket and some rope, along with what wilt need for a day and half’s ride. Meet us in the stables with it at six o’clock in the morn, not a second later. If we don’t see thee there we leave without thee.”

He turned his back on them and walked out the door, slamming it behind him so hard they both jumped.

“Valer,” Disu said huskily. Tears had begun to slide down her narrow, pointed face, and her ears had dropped as low as he’d ever seen them. “I promise thee, I’ll not hinder thee and Barethis—”

“I know thou’lt not,” Valer said woodenly, lying. He put his arm around her, pressing her face into the crook of his neck.

The dam within her broke at that. “Csevet,” came the thick, watery sob. “Did Barethis tell thee of the courier girl who….” She trailed off thinly, her body stiffening as she realized it was probably not a story Valer wanted to hear. Not right now.

“Aye.” His voice was as hollow as Barethis’s.

Hers was muffled against his dampened shirt. “Why Csevet of all folk, Valer? He’s such a love. He’d never hurt another soul.”

 _Because that enters not into the reckoning,_ Valer thought but did not say. She knew it as well as he did. She’d not been shaped in the crucible of the Cetho gutters, as he and Barethis had been. She’d been shaped in the arguably worse one of crops that failed or sat rotting in the fields for want of buyers, after seasons of work that broke backs and souls; where the only balm was the dubious one of metheglin, or of fouler brews distilled from grains and roots; and where ruined men often slit the throats of their kinfolk down to the littlest children before they cut their own.

Other than a too-casual mention in her early acquaintance with Valer and Csevet that her kin disapproved of girls becoming couriers, Disu had never spoken of them to her friends. But Barethis had once privately told Valer that she sent them letters now and again, sometimes with a bit of coin, and never once had she received an answer. Valer wondered if her dreams were haunted by the images of their blood soaking into the floorboards of a barn.

Rather than answer her, he let her wet his collar and shoulder for a few minutes more, then fished a handkerchief out of his tunic pocket. She blew her nose with a dreadful honk.

“Get thee some sleep,” he said. She nodded, and after blotting her face once more and returning the handkerchief to him she slipped out the door without another word.

***

“Goddesses,” Disu said, staring up Eshorana Hill into the heavens. Valer’s heart plummeted along with his ears.

They’d ridden all the previous day, mostly in tense silence. Then they’d slept in the rough, all separately, rather than Barethis curled up with Disu. Mid-morning they’d made the vicinity of Eshoravee. There was a stable one hundred yards from the foot of the hill. Its ostler, taciturn to the point of sullenness — and not in possession of Csevet’s mare — had said they’d not be able to bring their horses up the hill-road, then demanded payment for their keeping in advance.

Valer had assumed the road to be steep and narrow, perhaps riddled with roots and brambles. He hadn’t figured it to be _this_ steep, nor _this_ narrow, nor beset with one switchback after another. How had Csevet climbed this road, in the pelting rain and tearing wind, and likely in the dark as well? _Had_ he climbed it all the way to the manor? Had he fallen, instead, to lie pain-stunned and bleeding amid the thorns? And if he had, could he have survived these last six days?

As if reading his thoughts, Barethis said in the plural, choosing his words painstakingly, “We should… look down over the sides of the road, as we climb. To see if… if anyone might be there.”

Disu’s white skin took on a green cast; her ears, already low, trembled. _If fear’st heights, it’s thine own ill luck,_ Valer thought sourly. But he said, “I’ll look, Barethis.” _If only because I’ll not be able to stop myself from looking._

Barethis insisted Disu walk between the two of them; she had a hand wrapped tight around each boy’s forearm, and each of them had the fingers of his inside hand set into her shoulder like a claw. She did not balk at the pain but seemed to welcome it, in fact, as surety she would not fall. When the road became little more than a narrow staircase hewn from the stone that made up most of the hill, they climbed in single file, Barethis in the rear and Valer in the front.

They took their time, to keep their footing and that Valer might look down. And, later, they moved even more slowly because — though all of them were young and hale and as swift as the wind — the rigor of the ascent and the thinning of the air was ripping the breath straight out of their lungs.

“Stop,” Valer gasped when they were perhaps three-quarters of the way to the summit. “I see—” His heart froze.

“What dost see?” Barethis breathed.

“Strands… caught in a thornbush. Strands of something white.”

They all fell silent but for their panting.

“It… could have been blown there by the wind,” Barethis finally said. “Or a bird brought it there to start a nest. Canst see all the way down to the ground?”

“No,” Valer said mournfully.

“Then perhaps the brambles are too thick for… for anyone to have fallen through.”

Valer nodded and tried to draw comfort from that. Almost certainly, Csevet did not lie broken on the cold, wet ground.

_Does he lie broken within Eshoravee?_

When they reached the top of the rock-stair, they all moved away from the edge, dropping to the grass to catch their breaths. If the ground below them now were still not flat, at least it was blessedly non-precipitous.

The favored manor of the Dukes Tethimel loomed ominously over them, almost as if in spite of the brightness of the day. It was not the first menacing estate Valer had seen, but most, at least, had a beauty to them, with turrets and dormers and other flourishes of architecture. Eshoravee was square and, for all that it stood several storeys high, squat. It was built completely out of the local stone that was dark as any goblin’s skin, and barely any windows relieved the impassive face it turned to the world. A solid wall of yet more dark stone surrounded it, and its iron gates were tightly shut.

“Looks like a fortress, not a manor,” Barethis said, echoing Valer’s thoughts.

“Well…. it’s put together solid enough,” Valer said. “If he’s still within, he’s likely warm and dry.” His voice was not as confident as his words. Neither Barethis nor Disu answered him. At length, they stood and approached the gates.

The guard on duty made the ostler look the picture of voluble friendliness. He glared at Barethis, looked insolently up and down Disu’s body without meeting her eyes, and openly sneered at Valer.

“Good day, sir,” Barethis said. “The three of us are here from the Untheileneise Court in Cetho. We are in search of a friend of ours, another courier, who was dispatched to Eshoravee nearly a week ago with a message for Duke Tethimel.”

The guard spoke not a word, simply glared harder at Barethis. Disu blinked. Valer set his teeth into his lower lip. Barethis, his face carefully blank, waited a moment, then added, “We were hoping, good sir, that you or another in the employ of the Tethimada knows of his whereabouts.”

“Nay,” the guard snapped.

Barethis’s eyes widened by the merest fraction, and his ears went back by the same minute amount. “Er… might we please come in, good sir, and speak with the other servants? Our friend is very dear to us, and we are greatly concerned for his well-being.”

The man’s expression, as hard as the stones of Eshoravee, did not change for a moment. Then he drew his lips back in a rictus; he was missing several teeth. 

“What offer’st thou up for the privilege, boy?”

His accent was no heavier than Disu’s, Valer thought. But Disu, at least, hailed from a place that spoke modern Ethuverazheise. Valer had heard that to step into the hill-country beyond Puzhvarno was to step into a century gone by, and that the tongue its people spoke — full of terms and conjugations forgotten by most outside the University of Ashedro — reflected it.

Barethis dug into a pocket of his tunic and pulled out a semi-gold coin stamped with the image of Edrethelema VI, as well as half a dozen coppers. Frowning at the paltry sum, he looked at Valer and Disu, who rummaged through their own pockets and added to it.

The grand total was, Valer thought, borderline acceptable. He’d bought his way into places for that much, give or take a copper. The guard, however, produced a second sneer. “Would’ve thought two catamites and a slattern’d have more coin atween ‘em. Well, mayhap ne _thou_ , hobgoblin, unless thy patrons blow all the candles out afore they swive thee. The ribbons ne do mich to improve thy look.”

Valer could sense Disu strung taut as a wire next to him, hands curling into fists. Barethis steadied her by the shoulder.

“What would it take, sir, for you to let us in?” Valer asked. And he guessed the answer even before the man’s head swiveled back to Disu.

The guard leered at her, then spat on the ground. “Five minutes wi’ the drab.”

Barethis took a breath to speak, gripping more tightly to Disu’s shoulder. She pushed his hand away and stepped forward. “We agree,” she said, voice rigidly controlled, eyes empty.

“Disu,” Barethis said hoarsely.

She ignored him. “Five minutes,” she said to the guard. “And away from our friends, around the corner or the like.”

The man grinned broadly at Barethis. His gloved hand shot out and grasped Disu’s wrist, dragging her to him, and he cupped and kneaded her arse through her leathers. She bit her lip and said nothing. “Back anon,” he said gaily to Barethis and Valer, and, unlocking the gate, he disappeared through it with Disu in tow.

Valer put his hand on Barethis’s forearm. His roommate stood there leadenly, responding not at all. The next five minutes passed in silence, other than the muffled rustling of foliage and clothing, a wet sound now and again, and, finally, a loud, lewd groan. Barethis put his face in his hands.

Disu and the guard reappeared, she blotting her mouth on the sleeve of her leathers, he lacing up his trousers. As his eyes fell upon Barethis, he grinned nastily. “Clever mouth, thy slut hath,” he said. Valer, who could feel Barethis stiffen under his hand, gripped his forearm tighter in warning as the guard swung the gate full open and gave them a deep, mocking bow.

Valer was not saddened in the least to leave the man behind. But, once they were out of his earshot, the air fair vibrated with the tension between Barethis and Disu. They were nearly to the front door of Eshoravee when Barethis said, low and raw, “We could have persuaded him in some other wise. There was no reason for thee to have agreed to service that mangy bastard like a…” To Valer’s relief, he broke off there.

“’Twas only me mouth,” Disu said from between clenched teeth.

“‘Only,’” Barethis muttered.

“At least I got us in the gate. Unlike thee. Why didn’st tha think to bring more coin with thee, lackwit?”

“Shut your mouths, the both of you,” Valer said — snarled, he realized as soon as the words had left his own mouth, and he felt his face heat with shame. Barethis and Disu fell silent, and when Valer darted a covert glance at them while he lifted the massive iron knocker on the left-hand door, they were staring at their boots, both their faces pink.

The door swung open to his knock. The man who stood within, clad as the guard had been in Tethimadeise livery, seemed younger and in better health but no more genial to the three strangers on the step. Barethis, who’d regathered his wits, said, “Good day, sir. We come from the Untheileneise Court in Cetho, seeking a friend of ours who carried a message to Duke Tethimel nigh on a week ago. He has not returned.”

The manservant said nothing, just blinked, as if those who stood before him were not common couriers but monsters from the depths of the Chadevan Sea. Valer spoke this time: “Er, sir, may we come in and speak to your steward?”

“He’s ill abed,” the man said, then fell back into his sullen silence.

Disu tried this time. “Is there… someone we could speak with? Please, sir, we are worried sore for our friend.”

The manservant gave her the hard stare that had become far too familiar in the last few hours. Then he said, “It’ll cost ye. Coin, an Shuchis hathn’t taken it all of ye. Or …” A smirk twisted his coarse features. “… a bit of quim.”

Barethis seized him by the throat, hoisted him into the air, and slammed him against the door. “Thou’lt take us to the steward, the housekeeper, whoever will help us,” he snarled. “Or thou’lt go arse over head down the side of the hill.”

“Barethis!” Valer and Disu both shouted. Valer leapt at Barethis and tried to tug his hands away from the manservant’s throat. “The captain _warned_ us against this!”

“The captain be _damned!_ ” Barethis roared. The man in his grip, eyes wild and ears low, tried to squirm backward into the heavy wood of the door.

“Barethis, _stop,_ ” Disu pleaded. “For the love of Saleizho, please—”

“Ye’re here for him, an’t ye.”

It was a statement, not a question. All four of their heads whipped around at the age-deepened voice, coming from the hallway beyond the door.

The woman standing there was seventy if she were a day. But she stood tall and straight in her severe black gown, a plain iron chatelaine on her narrow belt and the Tethimadeise device on her breast. Her deeply lined face reminded Valer of horses’ tack that had been left to the mercy of the weather.

Barethis abruptly dropped the manservant, who thumped down onto the stone step with a wheezing grunt. The housekeeper did not seem to care that a stranger from a strange city had just manhandled one of her staff; it was the manservant, not Barethis, upon whom she cast a cold eye. “Shuchis hath most certes left them out of pocket already. Canst eke out thy wage some other wise, Roda.” She jerked her head toward the interior of the manor. “Get thee gan.”

“Me’m,” Roda muttered, staggering to his feet with his hand at his own throat. With a duck of his head, he fled inside.

She turned her attention back to her visitors. Before she could speak, Valer found himself blurting, “Does he live?”

She blinked, then said quietly, “He doth.” Neither her voice nor her face gave any other information away. “Come,” she added, and Valer could not remember ever hearing any lord or lady speak so commandingly.

Square and plain on the outside though it was, Eshoravee within was a mare’s nest of architecture. They walked down hallways that bent and twisted back upon one another, not unlike the switchbacks of the road they’d ascended. Though all the lines seemed plumb enough, the doorways they passed varied greatly in size and shape. So did the windows, though they were few and far between. Of the various stairways Valer spotted, some seemed to disappear into heavy slabs of ceiling with no trap-doors, and one or two inexplicably stopped in mid-air. 

It was, he thought, like as not thanks to the whims of a past Duke Tethimel; madness paired with money could produce curiosities such as these. Or perhaps they were the long-ago renovations of a former owner, ground to a halt when the gold ran out, and the Tethimada subsequently decided their own coin better invested in silk factories and land — or spent on hounds and whores. But he could not help the disquieting thought that Eshoravee might have been built this way a-purpose, to confuse hapless quarry and pen it within.

Many of the stairways were perfectly functional, if narrow and creaking, and they ascended three of such before the pitch of the ceiling told Valer they’d reached the attic. The window at each end of the main hallway was little more than a slit, and even at the height of day the light was low. The ceiling-plaster brushed against the housekeeper’s iron-gray hair, and Barethis began to cant slightly to one side. But there were fewer hallways at this level. The second one she led them down was the last, a short one that ended in a squat, solid door.

Next to the door was a sconce, its taper unlit. “Take the candle,” the housekeeper ordered no one in particular. Disu, hurrying to obey, stood on tiptoe and took it down. From her chatelaine, the old woman picked out flint and steel and scraped the one against the other over the wick. The flame cast eerie shadows over the faces about it and gave off an aroma Valer judged to be tallow mixed with a better-smelling oil.

The old woman turned to the door and gave it two brisk raps. There was no response from within. From her belt she now selected a slender key, which turned in the lock with a series of light, dry clicks. The hinges protested vehemently as she pushed the door open.

The stench was a tangible thing: rank sweat, stale piss, dried blood, putrefaction, and another odor that Valer’s mind declined to name but which made his stomach clench. Behind him, he heard Disu cough and choke, and the shadows before them swerved and dipped along with the taper in her hand.

When their eyes adjusted, Disu fell as silent as the rest of them.

The room was small, and the roof sloping down to the far wall made it even lower than the hallway. Taking up nearly half of it was a narrow bed, thin covers over thin tick upon a rusted iron frame. On the pillow, facing the doorway, was a mass of lank and matted white hair, free of braid or queue.

Valer nearly choked on his own heart. He took three steps, dropped to his knees beside the bed, and laid a hand on the upturned shoulder of its occupant. Who jerked away from him with a soft, muffled cry that sounded very much like _no_ and which dissolved into a heavy, wet cough.

“Csevet,” Valer said hoarsely. “Csevet. ’Tis me. Valer. Please, wake up.”

“No…” More coughing. “… please… leave me be…”

“Oh, gods, Csevet,” Disu whispered. “Take the candle,” she begged Barethis, and a moment later she was perched on the bed, hands clutching the slender, trembling outline of Csevet’s legs beneath the threadbare coverlet. “Csevet. It’s me, Disu, here with Valer and Barethis.” Her voice was husky. “Come to take thee home. Captain Volsharezh’s sent us.”

“Disu,” came Csevet’s thready mutter, but Valer’s relief was short-lived. “Shouldst not’ve come…” Csevet broke off coughing, then managed, “’rt in danger here….”

“There be no more danger,” Disu said, voice harsh and cracking. “We’re here, thy friends, and we’ll let naught more happen to thee. Aye, Valer, Barethis?”

“Aye,” Valer said dully. He put his hand again on Csevet’s shoulder; the nightshirt over it was stiff and clammy. Disu must have gotten through to Csevet, for he did not resist again when Valer turned him flat on his back and peeled the coverlet halfway down his chest.

Disu stifled a cry deep in her throat. Barethis, forgetting the presence of the housekeeper, uttered the vilest phrase Valer had ever heard from anyone, let alone him. Valer himself could not make a sound, as if his throat and mouth had been sealed up with mortar.

Csevet’s beautiful white face was no longer white, no longer beautiful. Under its heavy sheen of sweat, some of the bruises covering it had begun to go yellow or green, but others, including those that ringed his eyes, remained livid. His lower lip was pulped red, though scabbing over. The flesh of each ear was torn and tattered at both edges, not one silver ring remaining. The bite-marks and lacerations oozed pale yellow-green, and branching out from them were a myriad of angry red lines. His breast rose and fell rapidly with his wetly rattling breath, and his entire body spasmed with chills. The nightshirt he’d been put into, judging by its discoloration, hadn’t been changed in days.

Valer released him and stood. Aware in some small part of his mind that his rage was poorly directed, he rounded on the housekeeper. “Has he not been washed at all?” he demanded, gripping the near bedpost and feeling the rust bite into his fist.

“We ha’n’t had the leisure to tend him,” the old woman said, her voice level and her face as impassive as the manor about her. “Ne with the Duke and his … son here. A servant found the lad in the hound-fighting courtyard. We wouldn’t leave him lay there, but best we could do was hide him safe away ’til someone cam for him. The Tethimada ne’er come up here; ’tis all servants’ quarters. Kitchen lass dripp’th water onto the lad’s lips thrice a day, betimes a bit of willow-brew. She can get him to drink, but ne to et.”

“We’ll wash him,” Disu said, with the tremor in her voice that omened tears. “Please, Merrem, might we wash him before we take him home?”

“An ye’re wise, ye’ll bundle him up in the coverlet and be gan as fast as fast can go,” the housekeeper said sharply. “Afore Dach’osmer Tethimar and his hounds see the lad again.” 

“His… hounds?” Barethis repeated, his voice low and dangerous. “He set his _hounds_ on our friend?”

“Aye. His two-legged hounds.”

“Saleizho Dachenzhasan,” Disu muttered. She looked greener than she had on the climb to the summit. Valer thought of the girl who worked out of Ashedro, who had never returned from Eshoravee. Every hair on his body stood on end, and his stomach was probably churning harder than Disu’s.

“I cannot enter the room, ’tis too low for me,” Barethis said thickly. “But an you bring him to me, Valer, I’ll carry him back to Cetho on my horse.”

“I’ll help,” Disu said, and Valer did not think anyone else could hear her speak it.

One arm around Csevet, Valer tried to draw him up to sit in the bed. But Csevet had as much strength and balance as a rag-doll, and he slumped against Valer’s shoulder, shivering. Disu loosed the edges of the coverlet out from under the tick, and she helped Valer wrap it around Csevet’s body, then to sit him up limply between them on the bed’s edge. He swayed in their grasp, and his first exertion in near to a week made his breath bubble and hiss. Panic flared in Valer: _Has he a broken rib? More than one? Were they driven into his lungs?_ And then he bleakly realized that, even if all the answers were yes, there was no help for any of it until they were far from Eshoravee.

“Come, beloved,” Valer whispered, his eyes stinging. The old woman could probably hear the endearment, he knew, but he couldn’t keep it from his lips.

If Csevet were awake enough to have any will, his shaking muscles could not obey it. Valer found himself and Disu dragging his lover between them and over the threshold of the room, where Barethis knelt, eyes glistening in the taper’s light. They fixed the coverlet tight around Csevet, covering his head as best they could, before settling him into Barethis’s arms. Their friend rose slowly, minding the hallway ceiling.

The housekeeper led the way once again. Valer followed her directly, walking carefully before Barethis and mindful that the big courier could not watch his own step with Csevet in his arms. Disu brought up the rear. Cautiously they stepped down each staircase. Valer thought of the road down Eshorana Hill with dread.

The last stairway they descended opened onto the kitchen. A young girl in scullery blacks stood not far away; she turned, and she stared. Valer wondered if she were gawking just at Csevet, swaddled like a babe and raling for breath, or at all of them together. He wondered if she’d ever seen any faces that were not local folk or Tethimada.

“Kito,” the housekeeper snapped. The girl startled almost comically. “Fetch skins of water and vinegar, and a clean rag.”

“Me’m,” Kito muttered with a deferential nod, moving hastily out of the kitchen. The wait for her return seemed hours to Valer. He wanted nothing more than to be gone of this place, with its noontime darkness and deceiving stairways, and the evil of its owner’s son sunk into every nail and board and chunk of plaster. Even shuffling down the endless, treacherous hill-road would be preferable to standing in the kitchens, where he doubted the Tethimada ever set foot.

He wanted to rail at the housekeeper, ask her why she and Kito and Roda and Shuchis willingly served one such as Eshevis Tethimar. He held his peace. Whom else would they serve in this backwater, where one could just barely scratch out a living from the stony ground, where few were lettered, where no one came to set up shop among its mistrusting folk? How would a people so ill-prepared for the modern world fare in the factory towns of Thu-Evresar and Thu-Istandaär? How even would they _get_ to such places, with no nearby bridge across the Istandaärtha and no gold for a journey to a place where they could ford it — let alone for a journey west?

Kito finally re-emerged into the kitchen with skins and rag in hand. She passed them to Disu, perhaps as the stranger she found the least threatening, although she resolutely did not meet the other girl’s eyes. “Thank you,” Disu said gravely. Kito nodded, mumbled something, and disappeared once more.

“Ye can cleanse his ears with the vinegar once ye’re shot of this place,” the housekeeper said. “Halfway down the hill, ne closer. Come, we’ll lead ye out.”

“Merrem,” Valer said huskily as they reached the door. In the plural, he continued, “We are ever so grateful to you, for having taken care of our… friend as best you could. We have no more coin to give you—”

“Of course ye ha’n’t,” the old woman said, dry and curt. “Thanks to Shuchis. Ye owe us naught, lad.” She paused. “We’d a grandson, once, nigh your friend’s age. Dach’osmer Tethimar knocked him about for… for aught, we suppose. His head struck the mantel as he fell..” Her eyes were bright and hard. “We’ve ne grandson now.”

Valer swallowed. “We are so very sorry, Merrem.”

She turned her head away. She was silent for a second, then she said harshly, “Just be gan. If Shuchis give ye more woe, come back and ask for us. The gods watch o’er ye all.”

Shuchis did not, in fact, give them more woe. He stared rudely at the sight of Csevet in Barethis’s arms, but he spoke not one more word to them as he unlocked the gate and stood clear of their way.

***

If the journey up to Eshoravee had been one of panting dread, the journey down was one of small, trepidatious steps — especially down the rock-stair near the summit. Even with no fear of heights to speak of, it seemed to Valer, who walked in front again, that the entire world lay far below and waited tauntingly for him to set one foot wrong.

Again Barethis followed him, carrying Csevet, who muttered and moaned at intervals. Valer would later learn that Disu walked behind her lover with a hand fisted in the tail of his shirt, which she’d dug out from beneath his leather tunic. Until they’d left the rock-stair behind, only Valer spoke, warning Barethis of a loose stone here, a fissure in a step there.

The dirt road was broader and lent their feet easier purchase, but it was steeper than the stairs and beset with treacherous things besides: stones, great tree-roots, and trailing bramble-vines. There would be no way to set Csevet down carefully and tend to him at this incline. Valer clenched his teeth and tried to tell himself that after nearly a week of lying in bed with festering ears and filling lungs, one more hour would make little difference to Csevet.

Though Valer called out in warning of every obstacle he spotted in their path, a few times Barethis stumbled over something that Valer’s boots had missed. Valer and Disu had to catch him — and Csevet — between them, Csevet crying out piteously as his body was jolted. Disu grunted under the combined weight. One time it fell so heavily upon her that Valer feared her back might strain from it, but never once did she complain.

When the toe of Valer’s right boot touched the dirt at the foot of Eshorana Hill, the breath left his lungs in the headiest rush he could remember since the first time Csevet ever kissed him. He fell to his knees with a long exhale of “Thank thee, Saleizho.” He had not been to the Othas’meire in far too long; this would have to be remedied.

“Get thee up,” Barethis snapped as he laid Csevet on the ground. “Canst worship later. Let’s cleanse his ears, then get our mounts.”

Valer started at the irritable tone, then realized that Barethis had been holding Csevet for near to two hours and his arms must be aching — and, still, they had a long day and a half before them of holding the reins. And, yes, he thought with guilt, for the moment Csevet was more important than the goddess. “Sorry,” he said, rising again.

Disu unpacked the rag and the skin of vinegar, sniffing it at first to make sure it wasn’t the water. She wet the rag with it, then knelt next to Csevet and began to dab at his ear wounds. Though she was gentle, at her first touch Csevet uttered a wail of pain that broke up into wet, racking, sobbing coughs. Valer held him and murmured to him — _thou’lt be all right_ and the like; pointless, stupid words that for all he knew were arrant lies — while Disu, face tight, continued to mop up whatever pus she could see. When she was done she balled up the rag and, snarling, threw it forcefully into the brushy weeds at the foot of the hill behind them. Barethis knelt again to gather Csevet, who continued to cough and sob, to his breast.

Csevet had fallen quiet by the time they reached the stables, but the ostler stared as hard and as rudely at him as had Shuchis the guard. Barethis glared back at him, ears just as flat as the ostler’s, but the man seemed fazed by neither his own discourtesy nor his customers’ approbation. Valer wondered what had happened to Csevet’s mare, but he chose to waste no breath asking. The ostler had probably sold the creature within a few days and justified it to himself because Csevet had not paid him for further upkeep. Captain Volsharezh could deal with the man if he saw fit.

Valer hurried over to Barethis to settle Csevet onto the back of Barethis’s gelding. With the rope from Disu’s saddlebag they bound him, coverlet and all, securely onto the horse’s croup. Barethis swung up in the saddle in front of him, careful not to bump him. Disu and Valer straddled their own mounts, and they left the stable without another word to the ostler.

If the long descent down Eshorana Hill had been heartstopping, the longer ride back to Cetho was heartbreaking. His injuries jostled constantly by the motion of the gelding, Csevet repeatedly began to moan and whimper from inside his coverlet cocoon. Then his breath would catch on the muck in his lungs, and he’d begin to cough — long, racking coughs, interspersed with gasps and sobs. When the coughing fit died down, he would moan and sob weakly until, mercifully, he lost consciousness. But after what always seemed too short an interval, he would be jolted awake once more.

After half an hour of it, Disu began to weep silently but openly. Valer’s throat had tightened at the very first cry from Csevet, but he lasted two hours before he began to feel the tears slide down his face. Barethis alone did not weep, but his face was ashen and every muscle in it taut. All their ears hung low as low could be; Valer imagined he could feel the tips of his brush the ground.

When they could ride safely no longer, the stopped and made camp again for the night. The pasties and apples that had been so delicious six days before tasted like ashes in Valer’s mouth. He and Barethis sat Csevet up between them while Disu held the water skin to his lips. Though some of it ran down his chin and onto his coverlet, to Valer’s tepid relief he drank a fair amount.

They lined up their bedrolls like one great bed: Valer on one end with Csevet next to him, Disu against Csevet on the other side, and Barethis behind her. Over all their individual blankets they cast the large one Barethis had bidden Disu bring along, and they crowded as close together as possible in the sharp air of the early-spring night to share their heat. Valer fell asleep with his nose in the foul coverlet, the watery rattle of Csevet’s breath in his ears, and his own eyes sore and swollen.

***

The Istandaärtha could be seen from the great yard of the courier fleet’s headquarters, and the sun hung low over its western bank as they rode up into the stables the next day. Barethis and Valer unbound Csevet from the gelding, Barethis once more hefted the fragile burden of him, and they and Disu left the horses in the care of the ostlers.

“Where do we bring him?” Disu asked as they walked toward the main building.

“The dining hall,” Barethis said grimly. “Esaran will be there, most like, and she will want to know before the medics do.”

The housemistress of the courier fleet was indeed taking her dinner there, along with several dozen couriers. As the four entered the large double doors and others caught sight of them, conversations began to falter then die down completely. Into the sudden silence Valer heard the words _Csevet_ and _Eshoravee_ whispered fearfully.

Echelo Esaran had frozen with her soup spoon in mid-air and her ears pinned to her head. Though Csevet’s face was at that moment turned away within his coverlet, at the sight of him in Barethis’s arms she uttered the same profanity Barethis had when he’d heard about Tethimar’s two-legged “hounds.”

Then, eyes flashing, she stood and rounded on Disu. “Who gave you permission to follow them to Eshoravee, girl? Not Captain Volsharezh, and _certainly_ not us.”

Disu flushed crimson and opened her mouth. Before she could speak, Valer leapt in. “Merrem Esaran. We feel compelled to say in Disu’s defense that her help was invaluable to us and Barethis in retrieving Csevet. She was able to get us all into the manor, despite the hostility of the guard—” Someone in the dining hall snickered. “—her words broke through Csevet’s delirium when even ours could not, she prevented him from falling several times, and she did a commendable job of tending to some of his wounds.” The hall was deathly silent now.

Esaran clenched her jaw. Her eyes on Disu were still hard, but instead of addressing her further she swung back to Barethis and, rising, said, “Follow us.”

They followed her out of the dining hall, across the yard, and into the main building, at the rear of which was the infirmary. Behind its front door was a small greeting and waiting room; at its desk sat a young man in a medic’s tunic emblazoned with the device of the courier fleet. His head and ears went up at the sight of Barethis with Csevet.

“Where do we put him?” Esaran snapped.

The medic rose. “Follow us, Merrem,” he said crisply.

They marched down the aisle between the long rows of beds, about half of them full and most of their occupants asleep or otherwise insensible. Their destination was one of the small examination rooms off the main area. The medic fumbled with something in the dark, and with a hiss the gaslight flared to life. Barethis laid Csevet down on the examination table, and Csevet groaned and coughed again as Barethis uncovered his face.

“Salezheio’s cunt,” Esaran said. The medic said nothing, but his eyes widened and his ears pulled back. _He must be new here,_ Valer thought.

The man recovered his aplomb quickly, saying to Barethis, “We’ll need you to undress him.” He looked apprehensively at Disu, but when she made no move to leave he evidently decided her modesty was none of his affair.

Barethis tugged the dirty coverlet off Csevet and let it fall to the floor, then pulled him up against his own body to support him. Csevet’s legs, bare to the mid-thigh and hanging limply over the edge of the table, were covered in additional fading bruises. Without the coverlet wrapped about him, he shook all the harder in the relative cool of the room.

“Help me, Valer,” Barethis said grimly. Valer read the look in his eyes: _I no more want to see what’s beneath his nightshirt than dost thou._

As Valer tugged at the shirt, which seemed to stick to Csevet in multiple places, Csevet continually moaned, and each moan dissolved into labored coughs. Valer murmured soothingly to him as he gently tugged at each bit of cloth that adhered to Csevet’s body. He lapsed into soft song, nearly under his breath, an old tune his mother used to sing to him when he was small. Csevet stilled, and though his breath caught repeatedly and his tremors grew near to convulsions as Valer worked him free of the shirt, he made no other sound, not even a whimper.

It was Valer, Disu, and Barethis who cried out when the loosened shirt was finally pulled over Csevet’s head.

What had caused it to cling to Csevet was not merely dried blood, though certainly enough of it stippled his arms, torso, and especially his thighs. He had been splattered with the seed of men. It covered him in great patches and in numerous rivulets that had initially dried, then been made mucilaginous with sweat, and the combined odor was not merely rank but obscene in the small room. Valer did not look at Esaran, but he could feel her rage behind him like a wall of flame.

“At this juncture,” the medic said quietly into the vibrating silence, “we believe it best that we examine him alone. He has been most grievously abused, and he has taken infection from the insults to his flesh as well as contracted bronchine. We wish to record the number and extent of his injuries before we begin to treat them, that we might do so with the greatest care. And, even before we examine him, we wish to administer poppy-juice to him, as the pain of these injuries combined with his difficulty in drawing breath will only continue to drain his strength. He must remain in the infirmary for quite a while to recover; we will place him in a private space, that he not draw unnecessary attention. Merrem, we will not have a full report of his condition for a few hours at least. You are welcome to remain, but we fear it will be a tedious and wasteful wait for you.”

“Understood,” Esaran said flatly. “But we will wait nonetheless.”

The medic nodded, then turned to Valer, Disu, and Barethis. “You three seem to have ridden a long way to retrieve him. We understand you are his lover and friends, and as such you are understandably distressed by what has befallen him. Unfortunately, we fear our examination of him will turn up further details that will pain you to learn. We would recommend you all take dinner, then seek your own beds and rest. Merrem Esaran will give you a full report on the morrow, once it has been delivered to her.”

It was a politely phrased dismissal, and if they caviled at it Esaran would put her weight behind it with a blunt order. Valer lay a gentle hand on Csevet’s bruise-mottled face and whispered, “Thou’rt home, beloved, where belongest. Wilt be well-cared for. I shall see thee soon.”

That night, Disu slept in their room, with Barethis in his bed. They did not make love, Valer was fair sure of it. Even if they had, he would later think, he would have been unable to grudge them for it.

***

A week later, when Valer was just returned from Cairado, Esaran walked up to him in the dining hall and put her hand on his shoulder. It drove a spike of fear clean through him. And then she spoke softly, a rare undertone of relief in her voice: “His fever is broken, Valer, and the poppy-juice draught has worn off. He asks for you.”

He wanted nothing more than to leave his meal half-eaten on the table and rush to the infirmary. Instead, he thanked her and forced himself to eat, slowly, as much as he could of what remained. Esaran despised waste, and his own mother would have cuffed him across the head for it. It was not until he had finished, cleaned up after himself, and wiped his hands on a damp rag that he took off running for the main building.

The same medic as before sat behind the infirmary’s greeting desk. He smiled at Valer, a smile Valer tried not to take too much hope from, and said once again, “Follow us.”

He led Valer to a small private room, a cubicle really, off the main area toward the front. It held no more than a narrow bed, a nightstand, and a tiny table and stool for medics. In the bed lay Csevet. He looked up as the door swung open, and he gave Valer his small, sweet smile. Valer’s heart swelled until it hurt.

Csevet had been thoroughly bathed and placed into a clean nightshirt, and his shining hair lay over his shoulder in a plain, heavy braid. His ears were swaddled so thick with bandages that Valer doubted he could move them at all. Three of his fingers were bandaged, too, and there was a plaster over the back of one hand. His bruises had mostly faded and his cuts closed up, but his face was gaunt, its hollows deep. His hands atop the clean coverlets were bone-thin.

Valer sat on the edge of the bed and took the plasterless hand in his, careful not to press the injured fingers too hard. Csevet had always had a wiry, supple strength to him, despite his delicate look, but his hand in Valer’s now was limp and brittle.

The medic said, “You may have time with him, but, please, do not overtire him. He will need a great deal of rest to recover in full.”

“We won’t,” Valer promised.

When the door had closed behind the medic, Valer gathered Csevet’s thin form to him. Csevet’s arms went about him, holding him with great feeling if with meagre strength. Valer, without thought, turned his head that he might brush his lips against Csevet’s — and Csevet turned his head away.

“I… forgive me.” Though his breath no longer wheezed and bubbled, the voice that had once been so clear and sweet was now but a husk. “I cannot.”

“There is naught to forgive,” Valer whispered back. He cursed himself for a fool that he had not thought to ask.

After a moment, Csevet said, “Dost know…?” He trailed off. Under what remained of the bruises, his face went dark pink. For the first time he could remember, Valer was not enchanted by his blush.

The medic had catalogued all of Csevet’s injuries and made his report to Esaran. The next evening, she had taken Valer into her office, closing the door behind them, and shown him the notes. By the time he finished reading them, his hands shook so hard they could barely hold the papers. Esaran had come around the desk and put her hand on his shoulder, which she had never done before. Quietly she said that as Csevet would not be conscious for some time and Valer would do himself no favors by lingering at his bedside, she was sending him on a weeklong errand to Cairado.

Every fiber of every muscle had resisted the idea, but Valer forced himself to say, “Yes, Merrem.” Once he was on the river-road bound southeast, he realized that she had been the wiser of the two of them.

Now, into the silence between him and Csevet, he said no more than, “Aye.”

Csevet, head still averted, suddenly bared his teeth. “I bit him.”

“Eh?” Valer said, startled.

“There were too many of them, I couldn’t fight them off when they caught me… but when first Dach’osmer Tethimar grabbed me, I bit his hand.” Csevet laughed, the sound far more bitter or feral than any Valer ever had heard from him. “Deep, too. I tasted blood. I hope the bastard’s taken infection from it.”

The hatred was as rich and metallic on Valer’s tongue as Dach’osmer Tethimar’s blood must have been on Csevet’s. “So do I, beloved. So do I.”

Csevet exhaled, and, along with his breath, his ferocity seemed to leave him. He still would not meet Valer’s eyes. “Valer… an didst wish to find another, I would understand.”

“What?” Valer grasped Csevet’s chin and turned his head with force. Csevet still would not meet his eyes, not until Valer lifted his head, and then the look in Csevet’s eyes were as if Valer had gazed into his soul and visibly despised what he saw.

“Csevet,” Valer said, throat growing thick. “Why would I wish to find another? How canst say that, when I — _we_ — pleaded with Captain Volsharezh to let us search for thee, when we rode three days and two nights to bring thee home? All of us love thee, I most of all. I have been beside myself since first I realized thou wert late in returning. And yet think’st I will cast thee off?” His voice broke on the very last word.

“I…” Csevet pulled his chin from Valer’s grasp, looked down at the bed, and set his teeth into his healed bottom lip. “I will not wish to… to lie with thee, Valer. I do not wish to lie with anyone. Not for a long time. I…” He gasped then, and a tear trickled out of one pale eye and down his jutting cheekbone. “I am soiled, Valer. I would not soil thee in turn.”

Valer began to shake as if he and not Csevet had fallen ill. He wanted to vow that he would kill them all, to a man; hang their bodies in a public square in Cetho to rot off the gibbet; let the world know Eshevis Tethimar and the men who hung off him were perverts, rapists, near-murderers of young men who had smiles for everyone and who would never harm another soul.

He held his peace. For Csevet, and, he would realize later, for himself as well. Instead he whispered, “Oh, Salezheio,” and pulled Csevet close to him again. 

A dark part of his mind whispered in turn, _Perhaps shouldst set him free. How wilt bear up with a lover so injured in mind as well as body, one who might always flee thy touch?_

He loathed himself for thinking it. But he could not answer it in full.

He thought of other couriers he’d met who’d suffered violation at the hands of those they served, or at the hands of those they’d trusted. Some, perhaps most, recovered with time. They danced and diced and laughed and loved again, whatever wounds to their minds they still bore. 

But there were others. The one, heavy with the child of her violent man, who’d thrown herself off a factory roof in Rosiro. The other who’d hanged himself in a stable in Ezho. The third whom, rumor had it, had survived something very much like Csevet had, though with fewer wounds to her body. Months later she left the fleet because the wide world she once had ridden fearlessly through had, for her, turned to a shadow-scape swarming with threats.

How would Csevet fare next week? In three months? In a year? Would he mend as well as one could from such an ordeal, return to the open road and to Valer’s bed? Would he leave the fleet instead, seek out labor in the back of beyond as that woman had done, where he would see few faces from day to day? Or would Valer or Barethis return to their shared room one day and find him suspended from a ceiling beam, body stiff and face gone blue?

“Csevet,” Valer murmured at last, having gathered his words. “I … I cannot promise you I am strong enough to bear any grief for thee. But trust me in this, please, Csevet: thou’rt not soiled. Thou’rt the sweetest soul ever I have known, and I’d say so even an we weren’t lovers. Disu cried for thee, know’st, as did I: she wondered why one such as thou would come to harm, when thou’rt precious to all who know thee well. And it’s true.

“Thou’rt not soiled,” he repeated huskily. “Thou’st been gravely harmed by men who are soiled, men who harm the innocent for sport. They’ve done injury to thy soul as well as to thy body, and that is why think’st — oh, so wrongly, Csevet — that thou’rt soiled.”

Csevet said nothing. Valer wanted to repeat himself yet again, drill those words into Csevet like Esaran had drilled them all with the proper forms of address in every situation. But he bit his lip instead.

And then he thought of something.

“Csevet… when I was growing up, my mother kept our drinking-water in a great jug, after she’d strained and boiled it. One day the jar fell from the shelf and shattered. She despaired, for she couldn’t afford a new one and in fact had bought the broken one second-hand. But my father borrowed some glue, and she patched the jug together and let it dry in the sun… and though one could always see the cracks in it thereafter, that jug still held water, Csevet, as sound as any new one.”

“Thy parable could be more subtle, Valer,” Csevet said against his shoulder, a familiar wryness coming through the subdued tone. “Thou’lt ne’er supplant Omdar or Budarezh. The Archprelate, maybe.”

“True,” Valer said. “On the other hand, it’s led thee to make a joke, so I cannot be sorry for it.”

Csevet huffed out his breath. From that, Valer took heart for the few seconds until Csevet added, “Some jugs never do hold water again once broken, Valer. And thou know’st this.”

“I do,” Valer said softly. “But none of us know which sort of jug thou’lt be.”

This time Csevet made no reply. Valer reckoned it was better than if he’d made any protest.

They sat together a while. Csevet asked after Barethis and Disu and Esaran and a few others they knew. Valer said they were well, though deeply distressed at his ordeal. But, overall, they said very little to one another. Csevet kept his head on Valer’s shoulder, clutching at his back as if to reassure himself Valer would not disappear, sometimes twirling one of Valer’s ribbons around his finger. Valer stroked his hair, and from time to time his back, feeling every rib under his shirt and skin.

Eventually Csevet murmured, “I am sorry, Valer, but I cannot stay awake much longer.”

Valer took his chin in hand. Csevet tensed in the manner of one expecting not a kiss but a blow. Resolving to accustom himself to this, Valer pressed chaste lips against Csevet’s forehead and said, “I love thee dearly, Csevet.”

Csevet eased and whispered, “And I thee. Ask Barethis and Disu to come by later on, after the dinner hour.”

“I will,” Valer said, and stood. He let himself drink in the image of the boy in the infirmary bed. He was no longer the pretty, laughing, blushing boy Valer had been tumbling for nigh on a year, and maybe he would never be again. He needed Valer so much, needed all of them, Barethis and Disu and Esaran and all their other friends and the medics too. Perhaps more of them than they could give.

But still his light burned fierce inside him. It had always been there, alongside his sweet nature and his graceful manners, but few had ever seen it. Now it roared not only in his pale-grey eyes but visibly behind the skin made translucent by illness and marred by the hands of men. _Even if they’ve left nothing else of him for the while, ‘tis a light I can warm myself by,_ Valer thought. And if in the end he were like the feckless moths that flew too close to the torches… _ah, well, I am no moth, and I will mend._

“Sleep well, beloved,” he said softly, earning himself Csevet’s softest smile, and he felt that light warm his shoulders and back like the coming summer sun until he’d closed the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [farevenasdecidedtouse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/farevenasdecidedtouse/pseuds/farevenasdecidedtouse) for her beta work, and also to [Zdenka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/pseuds/Zdenka) for looking over the dialectical parts of the fic.


End file.
